1. Heaven made the race of men, designed With nature good and large; Functions of body, powers of mind, Their duties to discharge. All men this normal nature own, Its normal virtue all men crown With love sincere and true. Heaven by our sovereign's course was moved, And to aid him, its son approved, Gave birth to Chung Shan-fu.

2. Mild and admired, this chief displays Virtues that win the heart. His air and looks a wondrous grace To all his ways impart. His rule of life the ancient law, To bear himself unmarred by flaw With earnest mind he aims. In sympathy with our great Head, Abroad the royal will to spread His constant service claims.

3. The king gave charge to Chung Shan-fu:— "Hear now what I direct. As served your fathers, so serve you, And me, your king, protect. Let all my lords your pattern see; Publish among them each decree; Speak freely in my stead. Of what goes on inform my mind. Through you let all my measures find Obedience promptly paid."

4. Great was the charge. Our hero hears, And hastens to obey. Among the princes he appears; Of each he marks the way. Who good, who bad, throughout the land, He clearly sees. With wisdom grand He guards his life and fame. Nor day nor night he icily rests; The king's, the one man's, high behests His soul with zeal inflame.

5. Among the people flies the word: "What's soft men swallow fast; And what is for the teeth too hard Out of their mouths they cast." But never yet did mortal trace In Chung Shan such ignoble case; Nor soft nor hard he knows. The strong and fierce he does not dread; And on the poor or widowed head Insult he never throws.

6. Again the people often say:— "Virtue is very light? Light as a hair; yet few can bear The burden of its weight." 'Tis so; but Chung Shan, as I think, Needs not from virtue's weight to shrink, That other men defies. Aid from my love his strength rejects. If the king's measures have defects, What's needed he supplies.

7. He asks the spirit of the path His blessing to send down. His steeds are strong; each soldier hath A bravery like his own. Eastward they march; his charge is there. That city's bulwarks to repair, How ardently he hies! List to the tinkling of his bells! Of his steeds' constant tramp it tells;— The walls will soon arise.

8. Yes, on to Ch'i the hero went, With his four steeds so strong. Their eight bells told his purpose bold;— He'll not be absent long! I, Yin Chi-fu, this song now sing. Like gentle breeze, O may it bring To his unresting mind, 'Mid all his toils and cares, some cheer! Yes, may our great Chung Shan find here The comfort I designed!

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.